


Don't Read The Last Page

by parkadescandal



Category: Kingdom Hearts
Genre: Canon Compliant, F/M, First Time, Fluff and Angst, Keyblade Rituals, Post-Kingdom Hearts III, Resolution, Romance, TSCU, Wayfinders (Kingdom Hearts)
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-03-10
Updated: 2019-03-10
Packaged: 2019-11-14 19:12:01
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,474
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/18058379
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/parkadescandal/pseuds/parkadescandal
Summary: Terra and Aqua experience a classic parental milestone and land on departure from convention.





	Don't Read The Last Page

**Author's Note:**

> Post-canon, directly Pre-Ventus's Big Amnesia Be Gone Adventure. A fix-it only in that I'm addressing my minor salt that Eraqus didn't have a little more to say to his oldest son.

Aqua buries her face in Ventus’s hair. 

“Oh, Ven,” she breathes. “I know you that you have to go. But please never forget that you’re always home here with us.” 

She pulls him back by the shoulders, watching his face scrunch up to where he’s trying not to cry. She reaches out to touch his cheek. 

“You bet,” he says. _So brave_ , she wants to say, but it’s not something he needs to be told--he’s proved himself far beyond the child they’d immediately pulled into their hearts so many years before. 

“Take care. We’re always with you.” Aqua touches his chest then. The strength in his heart--in _all_ of their hearts--had forged them together more than any charm; the magic that had bound them now rewarded them for their trials. 

Terra, who has remained still and silent on the outskirts of this threatening waterfall of a goodbye, takes a step forward and gently places an arm around Aqua, coming to rest with a firm grip on her shoulder. She lifts a hand, hesitates for a second, then reciprocates with the lightest of touches to his back. Ventus throws himself over to bury his face in his chest, and Aqua throws her eyes over--as he places his other hand high on Ventus’s shoulder blade, Terra’s affectionate expression turns to meet her own eyes. She smiles then too, and it opens the door to let a happy little sob intrude upon the situation like an unexpected visitor. Ventus follows suit, reaching out to grip on to the both of them, bare hands clutching to the fabric of their clothes. 

Aqua takes a deep breath, then loosens up to allow their embrace to end, looking away. She spies movement in the background--the little cat creature who had mysteriously arrived the day that they had laid Eraqus to rest kicks its feet from one of the stone benches as it surveys the scene with patience.

Ventus pulls away with a little huff of breath, then puffs out his chest. He nods. They nod back. 

_I love you,_ Aqua mouths at him; he has to school his face again. _Love you too_ , he mouths as well, looking between the two of them. With finality, he about faces and strides forward while activating his armor, then turns over his shoulder to give them one last confident grin. Back turned, he summons Wayward Wind to open up a portal and then tosses it up with a flourish. 

Before it comes down transformed, he reaches out, and his little companion is injected with energy; it leaps up and scrambles over to take his hand as he leans down to meet it. With an encouraging little tug from Ventus, it climbs up his arm to land on his shoulder and latch on to his neck. It waves a feverish goodbye as Ventus’s feet hit his hoverboard, and just like that, the two of them disappear from view. The courtyard is silent again. 

“So this is an empty nest,” Terra says after a moment. His hand remains on Aqua’s shoulder. She straightens her back with the smallest movement, aware of the warmth of him and of the one that travels straight down her chest. 

“I guess you’re right,” she says, voice still a little unsteady. He places pressure on her shoulder then, a reassuring squeeze, lingering just a moment before removing his hand with care and turning to face her. She turns to walk towards the castle before he can meet her gaze, and he strides into step with ease. 

“What now?” he says. “What did the Master leave for us?” He gets nothing but a subdued sigh as a response, for a moment, as Aqua plows single mindedly ahead. 

“I don’t know that he had a plan,” Aqua says. None of this had really been part of her calculations. “We’ll have….we’ll have to make our own, I think.” 

They traverse the courtyard and land at the stairs. Aqua stops as if she had forgotten they were ever there. Terra waits with an air of patience, one leg propped up on the first step ahead of her. 

“Well, I’d be glad to be your assistant,” Terra says as he reaches out a hand to lead her up the incline. She looks at him for a moment, almost startled, before she reaches out to take it with hesitation. He closes her hand in his with a delicate touch. “I know that you can handle whatever it is.” He pulls her back into motion with a gentle tug. “If you want to open the castle for studies again.” Another tug. “If you just want to stay here.” And another. “I’d say you’d had enough adventure for a lifetime, but I’ve never known you to sit still long.” They’ve reached the plateau. All there is left is to open the door. “I’ll stay and be the watchdog, if you want to leave and defend the light on your own.” 

Aqua slowly dislodges her hand from where it still rests in his and turns a look towards the massive archway, then looks down to the ground. Her hair falls over her face. 

“Alone,” she says. “I’ve...no. I’ve been alone for enough time. I think even the light could get the best of me after too long.” 

Terra’s short laugh sounds surprised. She feels his hand on her shoulder, and after a beat, she understand that she’s supposed to look upward to meet him--he’s smiling. 

“There’s no way it would,” he says. A smile steals up on her face in return. She reaches up with one hand to rest on his forearm-- _I’m listening_ , it says. “No matter what, I’ll come find you,” he says, touching the hand she’d placed on him. “I couldn’t miss you--I’d know that light anywhere. It’s just a question of if you’ll have me.”

“I’m nowhere near ready to leave just yet,” she responds with confidence, reaching up for a moment with her other hand as if to bracket him and then about facing, sweeping down. Her hand twitches in a half-hearted clench. “But you may just have your work cut out for you all the same.”

“I’ll learn,” Terra says with warmth, and she sees years of ingrained habit compel him to reach out to summon the key, but he stops, suddenly hesitant. 

“Oh, you’ll learn,” she says, and opens the door. 

Home, Castle Oblivion no more. She’d never seen the inside of that terrible place, and she is immeasurably grateful--from the way some of Sora's companions had described it, the very atmosphere was cold, and shockingly sterile, colorless. Foreboding. The thought of Ventus’s energy in statis there, his fire snuffed out--she calls up the recent image of his brilliant smile to keep it stoked in her memory. 

Now the light shines through the stained glass again like before, and she remembers the way she imagined that each of the colored spots was like its own little concentrated puddle of heat when they grazed her skin on so many idle afternoons. It hits her again, but she _gets_ it now--there’d been nothing like this in the Dark World. Even the fallen worlds of light she had seen had remained frigid in suspension. But she’s warm. The bittersweet wave in her center could pull her own legs right from under her, but she won’t let it. 

Terra patiently watches as she drinks it in with a breath, and when her eyes land on him again, she sees that the beacon of the stained glass he’s standing in front of lights him up too. It’s like something out of the waking fever dreams she’d seen reflected back at her as she watched from the dark shore. Now she didn’t have to use an imagination fueled by the fleeting warmth of the islands to superimpose the color over it. 

“It’s a lot to take in, isn’t it,” Terra says. “It’s all ours now.” 

“I don’t think I could bear it,” Aqua says, resisting the urge to look to the floor once more. “Not when it’s this empty. I don’t know how the Master managed.” 

“Well, there’s a whole new generation of self-taught keyblade wielders out there, now,” Terra says, idly lifting his hand to give it undue concentration. Aqua suspects whatever lead him to pick at the imperfections on his glove is the same thing that kept drawing her gaze back to the marble.

“And we should at least offer to make a space for them here with us,” she says, starting down the hallway. Terra immediately follows suit. “We should...pass on our traditions. The way we learned. Not earning the power because the worlds are in immediate danger, but because...because it’s what you’ve trained for all your life. We’ll make masters of our own.” 

“You’ll be incredible at it.” 

Aqua stops, faltering in her response for a moment. She looks to him, and the proud smile he gives is touched with a bit of sadness. 

“I’m sorry, Terra. I assumed that’s what you wanted, too.” 

“Well,” he says, dropping his gaze. He makes to put a hand in his hair, then thinks better of it. He sighs. “I think you have to _be_ a master to make one. And I’m not so sure if I’d consider the title I’ve got a fair one. Not...not the way it came to be.” 

Aqua squints, then realization dawns. 

“Master Xehanort.” 

There’s a hitch to Terra’s breath. 

“I was...he named me. He named me master. But...I don’t want it. Not this way. I still don’t even have the ritual knowledge. I...” and here his voice turns down, grazing the edge of bitterness. “I never passed a Mark of Mastery.”

“A _Mark of Mastery_?” Aqua exclaims. “Terra. What could a...what could a _Mark of Mastery_ mean to any of us now? We already know you don’t need to have shown the Mark to _save the known universe_ , and what you’ve done, what you’ve been through--how could that not be enough?” 

Terra has the good graces to look cowed, and if he sees her clean a tear from her face, he doesn’t give any inclination. 

“But it wasn’t enough. I fell, Aqua.” 

“ _So did I!_ And no one took it away from me--”

“Who would, who was there to take it away?”

“It doesn’t matter!” Aqua hits a crescendo that warbles her voice an embarrassing amount, almost a screech. “Terra. It doesn’t matter, because in my eyes you’ve already--”

She freezes, then lunges into motion again to grab him by the arm. 

“Aqua,” he says, and the somber way in which it lands cools some of the hysteria from her. 

“...In my eyes, you’ve already shown the Mark of Mastery, Terra. And I am already a master.”

His face contorts for a moment, and she sees him about to protest her next thought. She takes the leap anyway. 

“You’ve shown me the mark. You have nothing left to prove, Master Terra.” 

His countenance falls--he puts a hand to his face and suppresses a shake to his voice. 

“The things I’ve done. The things I’ve seen--I’ve got these...impressions, of the darkness, and of not being able to stop it. In these other lives I’ve _been_ a master, I’ve _held_ the power, with the keyblade and without it.”

“But it wasn’t you,” she whispers. 

“Well, I was there, wasn’t I? And I know what it’s like. I should almost be glad. It was everything I ever wanted.”

“It wasn’t. It wasn’t what you wanted. You can have it on your terms now. I would never let you give up on your dream,” she falls off into a hush. “If...if it even still is your dream.”

“I’m not sure it even matters to me anymore. I’ve learned a lot, but...there’s something I know more than anything else. I’d never wield again if that’s what it took to come back to you.” 

“Terra,” she says, all the air sucked out of her. “You...you can’t possibly mean--”

“I mean it with everything I’ve got.”

She turns away, breathing deep to center herself, feeling the tears fall anyway. 

“My light,” she starts, measuring her tone. “My strongest light was waiting for us all to be together again. The only thing I wanted was to see your faces. I fought because I knew that if I were strong enough...I’d get to see you again. The real you.”

She returns the favor by not looking when he reaches up to wipe a tear from his face. 

“And we would have had everything we’d ever wanted,” she continues. “You and I would have been protectors of the light, like we’d always dreamed about. But we would have done it together.” 

“I don’t know if I’ve earned it. I’m...scared every time I reach for my keyblade that it just won’t come.” 

“You know that won’t ever be true,” she snaps. 

“But I’ve had a lot of time to think about what would happen if it was. And I have to be okay with never deserving the keyblade again.”

Aqua stops for a moment, horrified, then steels herself and makes a decision. 

“So I guess you leave me with one choice,” she says, then sweeps out to summon her keyblade. “We’ll just have to start over.”

She holds the blade up and motions for him to touch, and finally, reverently, he does. 

“In your hand,” she breathes, “take this key.” 

He gasps, a near silent sob. 

“Though you’ve already shown the makings, through this simple act of taking, its master you shall always be.” 

It’s still. She can feel the warmth of their connection tenfold with his hand on her blade. 

“And you will have me,” she says, and it settles around them, his eyes on hers. “As no darkness could contain you then. We’ll tear down borders around, and below, and above...so long as you champion--”

“The one that I love,” he says, reaching out with one hand to cup her chin, and the other half of him falls in line like the second domino--her blade wavers and disappears again as he brackets her face in his hands. “The one that I love,” he says again, and she reaches for stability from his waist. “Aqua, I’ve been trying to tell you. It’s always been...I’m in lo--”

She moves up onto her toes and kisses the rest of it out of him, a test, soft but sure, that she passes with his hand carding in her hair. 

“I love you too,” she says, separate now, but a millimeter away--but that’s just it; they’ve never operated otherwise, with him in her heart and her in his. They could never be apart again. 

**Author's Note:**

>   
>  ~~Look, Ma, No Riku, Not A One Rick Pony, I Can't Believe It's Not Soriku.~~  
> 
> 
>  
> 
> Thanks again, [pineovercoat](https://archiveofourown.org/users/pineovercoat/pseuds/pineovercoat/works?fandom_id=4182). 💖😎💖
> 
>  
> 
> [title](https://youtu.be/U8QV5fa7xa4)


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